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Soul Host Tampa In Critical Match-Up

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — It will be a showdown of the two elite teams in the Arena Football League on Saturday night at the Center as the 8-0 Philadelphia Soul host the 7-1 Tampa Bay Storm.

Philadelphia’s latest win came last Saturday night as they beat Cleveland in South Philadelphia 59-49. The Soul trailed by as many as 12 points in the second quarter before finding their footing.

“Came out rusty as all get out for sure, which you don’t want to do after a bye week,” Soul head coach Clint Dolezel tells KYW Newsradio. “Which happens a lot but I thought we had enough veterans we wouldn’t do that, but I was wrong. We did come out a little rusty, made some halftime adjustments, started making a few plays, defensively played great all night long, could’ve been even better if we just make some plays that were put in front of us. End up blowing them out in the second half as far as taking over the game.”

Soul quarterback Dan Raudabaugh completed 20 of 27 passes for 303 yards and seven touchdowns. He also reached a milestone in this one, joining the 30,000-yard club for his career.

“He’s the youngest to do it, by far (Raudabaugh is 30),” Dolezel says. “Way younger than I did it. (Dolezel threw for 44,564 yards during his AFL career, reaching 30,000 at age 35.) He’s a good football player and he’s only going to get better, that is the crazy thing. If he plays to the age I did, I mean he’s going to be 60-70 thousand yards we’re looking at for him. So he’s going to shatter all the records.”

Philadelphia and Tampa have met just once this season and that match-up was back on April 15th in Florida. The Soul won 56-52.

Dolezel talks about if there is anything he can take from that game as they prepare for Saturday.

“Very little, to be honest with you,” he says. “We’ve both had a lot of injuries. I don’t think they have one person in the secondary that played the first time. We’ve had a lot of significant injuries as well. Pretty much new teams, except for where it’s most important, both of us still have our quarterbacks who are one and two in the league in everything. So that’s where it’s going to be won or lost.”